* London,' one of the most extraordinary pro- | the heavenly Bull by the dewlap." It is ductions of that period of the stage, the cha- he who despises the "idiot art-masters that racter of which is evidently derived not from intrude themselves to our ears as the alchyany desire of the writers to accommodate mists of eloquence, who, mounted on the themselves to the taste of an unrefined' au- stage of arrogance, think to outbrave better dience, but from an utter deficiency of that pens with the swelling bombast of bragging common sense which could alone recommend blank verse."+ In a year or two Nash was their learning and their satire to the popular the foremost of controversialists. There are apprehension. For pedantry and absurdity few things in our language written in a 'The Looking Glass for London' is unsur- bitterer spirit than his pamphlets in the passed. Lodge, as well as Greene, was a "Marprelate" controversy, and his letters to writer of little romances; and here he does Gabriel Harvey. Greene, as it appears to us, not disdain the powers of nature and simpli- upon his deathbed warned Nash of the dancity. The early writers for the stage, indeed, ger of his course : "With thee [Marlowe] seem one and all to have considered that I join young Juvenal, that biting satirist, the language of the drama was conventional; that lastly with me together writ à comedy. that the expressions of real passion ought Sweet boy, might I advise thee, be advised, never there to find a place; that grief should and get not many enemies by bitter words : discharge itself in long soliloquies, and anger inveigh against vain men, for thou canst do explode in orations set forth upon the most it, no man better, no man so well: thou hast approved forms of logic and rhetoric. There a liberty to reprove all, and name none: for is some of this certainly in the prose ro- one being spoken to, all are offended; none mances of Greene and Lodge. Lovers make being blamed, no man is injured. Stop shalvery long protestations, which are far more low water still running, it will rage; tread calculated to display their learning than on a worm, and it will turn: then blame not their affection. This is the sin of most pas- scholars who are vexed with sharp and bitter torals. But nature sometimes prevails, and lines, if they reprove thy too much liberty of we meet with a touching simplicity, which reproof." It is usual to state that Thomas is the best evidence of real power. Lodge, Lodge is the person thus addressed. as well as Greene, gave a fable to Shak- say Malone and Mr. Dyce. The expression, spere. "that lastly with me together writ a comedy," is supposed to point to the union of Greene and Lodge in the composition of 'The Looking-Glass for London.' But it is much easier to believe that Greene and Nash wrote a comedy which is unknown to us, than that Greene should address Lodge, some years his elder, as "young Juvenal," and "sweet boy.” Neither have we any evidence that Lodge was a "biting satirist," and used "bitter words" and personalities never to be forgiven. We hold that the warning was meant for Nash. It was given in vain; for he spent his high talents in calling others rogue and fool, and having the words returned upon him with interest; bespattering, and bespattered. Another of the chosen companions of Robert Greene was THOMAS NASH, who in his "beardless years" had thrown himself upon the town, having forfeited the honours which his talents would have commanded in the due course of his University studies. In an age before that of newspapers and reviews, this young man was a pamphleteering critic; and very sharp, and to a great extent very just, is his criticism. The drama, even at this early period, is the bow of Apollo for all ambitious poets. It is Nash who, in the days of Locrine, and Tamburlaine, and perhaps Andronicus, is the first to laugh at "the servile imitation of vainglorious tragedians, who contend not so seriously to excel in action, as to embowel the clouds in a speech of comparison; thinking themselves more than initiated in poets' immortality if they but once get Boreas by the beard, and So That impatient spirit, with the flashing eye and the lofty brow, is CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE. It is he who addressed his first audience in Epistle prefixed to Greene's 'Menaphon.' † Ibid. One of words which told them that one of high pre- | petual trumpet, perpetual scarlet. tensions was come to rescue the stage from the courtiers of Tamburlaine says,— the dominion of feebleness and buffoonery :"You see, my lord, what working words he hath." "From jiggling veins of rhyming mother wits, As such conceits as clownage keeps in pay, We'll lead you to the stately tent of war, Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine, Threat'ning the world with high astounding terms."* His daring was successful. It is he who is accounted the "famous gracer of tragedians."+ It is he who has "gorgeously invested with rare ornaments and splendid habiliments the English tongue." It is he who, after his tragical end, was held "Fit to write passions for the souls below."§ It is he of the "mighty line."|| _The_name of Tamburlaine was applied to Marlowe himself by his contemporaries. It is easy to imagine that he might be such a man as he has delighted to describe in his Scythian Shepherd : "Of stature tall, and straightly fashioned, Like his desire lift upward and divine; bear Old Atlas' burthen. Pale of complexion, wrought in him with passion, Thirsting with sovereignty and love of arms. Making it dance with wanton majesty. His arms and fingers, long and snowy-white, Betokening valour and excess of strength." ¶ The essential character of his mind was that of a lofty extravagance, shaping itself into words that may be likened to the trumpet in music, and the scarlet in painting-per **66 Been oft resolv'd in bloody, purple showers, A meteor that might terrify the earth, And make it quake at every drop it drinks." Through five thousand lines have we the same pompous monotony, the same splendid exaggeration, the same want of truthful simplicity. But the man was in earnest. His poetical power had nothing in it of affectation and pretence. There is one speech of Tamburlaine which unveils the inmost mind of Tamburlaine's author. It is by far the highest passage in the play, revealing to us something nobler than the verses which "jet on the stage in tragical buskins, every word filling the mouth like the faburden of Bow-Bell." "Nature that form'd us of four elements, Warring within our breasts for regiment, Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds; Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend The wondrous architecture of the world, And measure every wandering planet's course, Still climbing after knowledge infinite, And always moving as the restless spheres, Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest, Until we reach the ripest fruit of all.”++ The "ripest fruit of all," with Tamburlaine, was an "earthly crown;" but with Marlowe, there can be little doubt, the "climbing after knowledge infinite" was to be rewarded with wisdom, and peace, the fruit of wisdom. But he sought for the "fruit" in dark and for**Tamburlaine,' Part I., Act v. tt Ibid. Part I., Act II. bidden paths. He plunged into the haunts | to Nash, "he is but a little fellow, but he hath one of the best wits in England." The little man knew If his life had not been of wild and profligate men, lighting up their murky caves with his poetical torch, and gaining nothing from them but the renewed power of scorning the unspiritual things of our being, without the resolution to seek for wisdom in the daylight track which every man may tread. fatally cut short, the fiery spirit might have learnt the value of meekness, and the daring sceptic have cast away the bitter "fruit of half-knowledge. He did not long survive the fearful exhortation of his dying companion, the unhappy Greene:- "Wonder not, thou famous gracer of tragedians, that Greene, who hath said with thee, like the fool in his heart, there is no God, should now give glory unto His greatness: for penetrating is His power, His hand lies heavy upon me, He hath spoken unto me with a voice of thunder, and I have felt He is a God that can punish enemies. Why should thy excellent wit, His gift, be so blinded that thou shouldest give no glory to the giver?" Marlowe resented the accusation which Greene's words conveyed. We may hope that he did more; that he felt, to use other words of the same memorable exhortation, that the "liberty" which he sought was an "infernal bondage." 66 29 * 'Eloquent and witty JOHN LYLY was called, by a bookseller who collected his plays some forty years or more after their appearance, "the only rare poet of that time, the witty, comical, facetiously quick, and unparalleled John Lyly, Master of Arts." Such is the puff-direct of a title-page of 1632. The title-pages and the puffs have parted company in our day, to carry on their partnership in separate fields, and sometimes looking loftily on each other, as if they were not twin-brothers. He it was that took hold Revels. "What hell it is in suing long to bide." He had been a dreary time waiting and petitioning for the place of Master of the In his own peculiar phraseology he tells the Queen, in one of his petitions,"For these ten years I have attended with an unwearied patience, and now I know not what crab took me for an oyster, that in the middest of your sunshine, of your most gracious aspect, hath thrust a stone between the shells to rate me alive that only live on dead hopes."§ Drayton described him truly, at a later period, when poetry had asserted her proper rights, as "Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, flies, Playing with words, and idle similies." Lyly was undoubtedly the predecessor of Shakspere. His 'Alexander and Campaspe,' acted not only at Court but at the Blackfriars, was printed as early as 1584. It is not easy to understand how a popular audience could ever have sat it out; but the incomprehensible and the excellent are sometimes confounded. What should we think of a prologue, addressed to a gaping pit, and hushing the cracking of nuts into silence, which commences thus ?—“They that fear the stinging of wasps make fans of peacocks' tails, whose spots are like eyes: and Lepidus, which could not sleep for the chattering of birds, set up a beast whose head was like a dragon: and we, which stand in awe of report, are compelled to set before our owl Pallas's shield, thinking by her virtue to cover the other's deformity." Shakspere was a naturalist, and a true one; but Lyly was the more inventive, for he made his own natural history. The epilogue to the same "Where the rainbow toucheth the tree no caterpillars will hang on the leaves; where the glow-worm creepeth in the night no adder will go in the day." "Alexander and Campaspe' is in prose. The action is little, of the somewhat battered and clipped but sterling coin of our old language, and, mint-play informs the confiding audience that ing it afresh, with a very sufficient quantity of alloy, produced a sparkling currency, the very counters of court compliment. It was truly said, and it was meant for praise, that he "hath stepped one step further than any either before or since he first began the witty discourse of his 'Euphues.""+ According * Meres. + Webbe's Discourse of English Poetry,' 1586. 'Apology of Pierce Pennilesse.' § Petition to the Queen in the Harleian MSS.: Dodsley's Old Plays, 1825, vol. ii. D higher talent, he had to endure poverty and disappointment, doomed to spin his "pithy sentences and gallant tropes" for a thankless Court and a neglectful multitude; and, with a tearful merriment, writing to his Queen, "In all humility I intreat that I may dedicate to your Sacred Majesty Lyly de Tristibus, wherein shall be seen patience, labours, and misfortunes." the talk is everything. Hephæstion exhorts | hard one. Without the vices of men of Alexander against the danger of love, in a speech that with very slight elaboration would be long enough for a sermon. Apelles soliloquizes upon his own love for Campaspe in a style so insufferably tedious, that we could wish to thrust the picture that he sighs over down his rhetorical throat (even as Pistol was made to swallow the leek), if he did not close his oration with one of the prettiest songs of our old poetry : Cupid and my Campaspe play'd THOMAS KYD was the author of 'Jeronimo,' which men long held as the only best and judiciously penned play in Europe.”* Wherever performed originally, the principal character was adapted to an actor of very small stature. It is not impossible that a precocious boy, one of the children of Growing on 's cheek (but none knows how), Paul's, might have filled the character. At cards for kisses, Cupid paid; With these the crystal of his brow, The dramatic system of I-ly is a thing unique in its kind. He never attempts to deal with realities. He revels in pastoral and mythological subjects. He makes his gods and goddesses, his nymphs and shepherds, all speak a language which common mortals would disdain to use. In prose or in verse, they are all the cleverest of the clever. They are, one and all, passionless beings, with no voice but that of their showman. But it is easy to see how a man of considerable talent would hold such things to be the proper refinements to banish for ever the vulgarities of the old comedy. He had not the genius to discover that the highest drama was essentially for the people; and that its foundations must rest upon the elemental properties of mankind, whether to produce tears or laughter that should command a lasting and universal sympathy. Lyly came too early, or too late, to gather any enduring fame; and he lived to see a new race of writers, and one towering above the rest, who cleared the stage of his tinselled puppets, and filled the scene with noble copies of humanity. His fate was a Jeronimo the Spanish marshal, and Balthazar the Prince of Portugal, thus exchange compliments:— "Balthazar. Thou inch of Spain, Thou man, from thy hose downward scarce so much, Thou very little longer than thy beard, Speak not such big words; they 'll throw thee down, Little Jeronimo: words greater than thyself! It must be. Jeronimo. And thou, long thing of Portugal, why not? Thou that art full as tall As an English gallows, upper beam and all, What! have I almost quited you?" There can be no doubt that Jeronimo,' whatever remodelling it may have received, belongs essentially to the early stage. There is killing beyond all reasonable measure. Lorenzo kills Pedro, and Alexandro kills Rogero: Andrea is also killed, but he does not so readily quit the scene. After a decent interval, occupied by talk and fighting, the man comes again in the shape of his own ghost, according to the following stagedirection :-"Enter two, dragging of ensigns; then the funeral of Andrea: next * Jonson's Induction to 'Cynthia's Revels.' Your sable streams which look like molten pitch; My funeral rites are made, my hearse hung rich.” HENRY CHETTLE, a friend of Greene, but who seems to have been a man of higher morals, if of inferior genius; and ANTHONY MUNDAY, who was called by Meres "the best plotter" (by which he probably means a manufacturer of dumb shows), are the only remaining dramatists, whose names have escaped oblivion, that can be called contemporaries of Shakspere in his early days at the Blackfriars. CHAPTER VII. ON THE CHRONOLOGY OF SHAKSPERE'S PLAYS. THE order in which the thirty-six plays contained in the folio of 1623 are presented to the reader is contained in the following list, which forms a leaf of that edition : 66 A CATALOGUE OF THE SEVERAL COMEDIES, HISTORIES, AND TRAGEDIES CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME. The Tempest. Comedies. The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The Merry Wives of Windsor. Measure for Measure. The Comedy of Errors. The Taming of the Shrew. Twelfth Night, or What You Will. Histories. The Life and Death of King John. Tragedies. Troilus and Cressida. The Tragedy of Coriolanus. The Lifend Death of Julius Cæsar. The Tragedy of Macbeth. The Tragedy of Hamlet. King Lear. Othello, the Moor of Venice. Cymbeline, King of Britain." The general division here given of the plays into three classes is manifestly a discriminating and a just one. The editors were thoroughly cognizant of the distinction which Shakspere drew between his Histories and Tragedies, as works of art. Subsequent editors have not so accurately seen this distinction; for they have inserted 'Macbeth' immediately after the Comedies, and preceding 'King John,' as if it were a History, taking its place in the chronological order of events. It will be observed, also, that the original editors had a just regard to the order of events in their arrangement of the Histories, properly so called. But the order of succession in the Comedies and Tragedies must be considered an arbitrary one. Subsequent editors have introduced an order still more arbitrary; and to Malone belongs |